<p>"Berkeley's and UCLA's endowments are right up their with USC. It's nice though to see an SC'er finally admit they only chose USC because it cost less, and not because they had thoughts it was a better school."</p>
<p>Wrong. As taken from <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112636.html</a>,</p>
<p>USC: 2.4 Billion
Berk: 2 Billion
UCLA: 1.5 Billion</p>
<p>Though endowment is irrelevant. What we're talking about is how generous USC is with need based aid and how people on this board are quick to discount the fact that only the most wealthy of students pay an entire $32k for USC -- far from everyone does. Are Berk and UCLA cheaper? Sticker pricewise, yes. Are they cheaper across the board? By no means. Can we just automatically assume they're cheaper and throw out the fact that USC is four times more expensive as if that applied to everyone and completely disregard the fact that it really varies on a case by case basis? Sure, if we're so deadset in our views that we like to mislead people.</p>
<p>DRab, Sakky's brother got paid to go to CalTech based on merit aid. We're talking need based aid here which is the main reason why few end up actually paying $32k. Unlike the UC's which only require the FAFSA, USC also requires the CSS-PROFILE which takes a much more in-depth look at a family's financial standing to calculate just how much they can contribute and not be impacted financially. This in part contributes to USC doling out so much aid.</p>
<p>To those reading this thread and are considering USC, I'd encourage you to consider USC's financial aid package with those of UCLA and Berkeley and see what the actual numbers are, instead of simply reading the full tuition numbers people throw about as if everyone paid that.</p>
<p>Look, I understand many of you have excessive pride in your alma maters and that's fine. But people come on to this board looking for information and some of you are misleading them. Try learning mroe about the financial aid process instead of simply cracking a Princeton Review, pasting in numbers, and telling posters that's actually what they'd be paying.</p>